It’s Official: Ubuntu 13.04 Will Drop Alpha Releases

There will only a Beta release through the entire development process!

A few days ago was only a rumor, but today, October 31, we’re unhappy to announce that the upcoming Ubuntu 13.04 operating system from Canonical will have a single Beta release and no Alphas, not even a Release Candidate.

As you all know, Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) for Ubuntu 13.04 is happening these days, between October 29 and November 1, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Among various other hot topics from UDS-R, one that caught our attention is the drastically changed Release Schedule for Ubuntu 13.04 (Raring Ringtail), due for release on April 25, 2013.

So, what exactly was so drastically changed? Well, first of all there won’t be any Alpha releases. Second of all, the Release Candidate is also gone from the development cycle. Instead, we will get just a single Beta release for testing!

Yes, that’s true, according to Nicholas Skaggs, the Ubuntu QA community coordinator for Canonical, who says “The Release schedule has dropped all alphas, and the first beta, resulting in a beta and then final release milestone only.”

“In addition, the freezes have been moved back a few weeks. The end result is the archive will not be frozen till late in the cycle, allowing development and testing to continue unencumbered. This of course is for ubuntu only. Which brings us to flavors!” he added.